Blood Soaked and Contagious Read Online Free Page A

and time to scale up her operation. She found a dairy that could supply the milk and a willing neighbor (me) who could help her build cheese presses.
    I’ve got cheese. I’ve got enough cheese that I could trade it, the hardware supplies, and my own semi-skilled manual labor, and also live a comfortable life. As you might imagine, a comfortable life where I didn’t go out and kill zombies would probably be more satisfying. Sadly, you don’t get that kind of choice when you need to defend your community from undead squatters. Worse, because we’re all bartering and interdependent, we can’t just kill someone who produces what we need if they contract the virus. We’re in a position in which we actually have to try to keep them hidden, safe, and productive for as long as possible. The longest we were able to keep someone hidden was measurable in days, not months.
    Mister Yan was a tailor. He had become our source for clothing repair and anything we made that needed more than hand sewing. Somehow, he got infected. It took only five hours after he was infected for a hungry visitor to find him.
    Yolanda’s husband, Omér, took care of that critter. Two hours later, Mister Yan had been moved into Shawn Cooper’s basement. Two guards at all times, four-hour shifts. Neighborhood watch on similar shifts. Perimeter patrol duties assigned as well.
    It kept every able-bodied adult in our community working an extra four hours a day on top of whatever they normally did. We did a good job, but we were not prepared for a direct focused assault.
    There were 40 of them and were led by someone who had been a captain in one of the infantry battalions. We finished off most of them, but there were enough left to take Mister Yan from us. We also lost people in that fight.
    The blessing for us is that our former neighbors did not come back from the dead. They had been victims of a sniper or someone else with good aim. A single large-caliber bullet to the head ended each of their lives.
    Six months after that attack, we still feel the loss of those people every day. It makes you reevaluate the meaning of each human life, let me tell you.
    I am seriously glad Shawn wasn’t one of those we lost. He’s our machinist, armorer, gunsmith, and metalworker. Without him, we’d all be dead.
    The military wanted to be useful, and I’m absolutely sure the commanders, chiefs, and so on who were sequestered in the bowels of the Pentagon were attempting to help the common man. At least, I have to believe in that a little bit, or the rest of my sanity will give way to something less friendly. The sad reality of the matter is that the Armed Forces usually cause more damage and loss of life than they prevented.
    When it came to neighborhood-to-neighborhood conflicts, the military kept their noses out of it. The only occasions in which they were called out to do anything besides protect the national critical infrastructure were situations where there was a direct threat to the government’s status quo.
    Two weeks ago, the Army assaulted Chain Bridge. For those of you who are not as intimately familiar with the Washington, DC area, let me give you a little framework to help it make sense.
    Chain Bridge is a bridge. Clever name, don’t you think? It stretches from what used to be an insanely ritzy enclave of Northern Virginia into the upper northwest side of Washington, DC. Trust me, it is a high-dollar area, with heavy commuting and lots of undead formerly rich people meandering around.
    The bridge itself is the sort of structure that always seems to be under constant repair for one reason or another.
    Another bright spot in that general area is Langley. The CIA. Smack in the middle of many people who are not keen on organic meats, artisan-baked breads, and superb wine cellars anymore. These days, they’re immensely interested in foraging for two-legged, free-roaming people.
    Having been human, spoiled rotten or not, these creatures are not stupid. Where